Why are you in the hobby?

Dear Guys and Gals,

 

This is a subject that deserves restating for all the newbies that have joined since it was brought up, initially! I have reviewed my post and I want to add something. I amm in this hobby because I want to attract a younger audience and make them see what a particular joy this can be for families to interact with one another on a hobby level and get out from those screens and tv's that occupy most of our lives. Go out in the world and ride a real train and visit a real museum.

 

 

Let's keep the conversation going!

 

Mike Maurice

Fun.

Every other hobby threw me out.

I like old stuff and I like trains. Have ever since I can remember. I like the old steam locomotives. I like vintage electric trains. Other hobbies are airguns (like the old ones better than new) and my latest is a shotgun game called five stand. Yeah, I think old shotguns are cool too.

But trains and especially now old electric trains will be my favorite pastime.

A few years back I had one of those frank discussions with 'self'. Fortunately, 'self' is a pretty straight forward kind of guy with no bluffs or hidden agendas. Anywho....the question was - what the heck are you going to do with all that time when the big day comes and they give you the big send off party at work?

 

I cannot think of any other hobby that involves so many different skills on so many different levels.....and chews up so much time. Many have noted that their layout is never 'finished' - which provides an absolutely perfect means to remain physically and mentally active in researching, developing, and building on a continual basis.Of course, there's the 'running' part also!!

 

Come ON 65!!!

Sometimes I wonder about all the $$$$$ I have pi**ed away over the years on items that were sometimes unsatisfactory or performed less than advertised. Of course there were also very enjoyable moments to balance out the frustrating ones.

 

Having  immersed myself in several gauges and scales over the decades, including miniature live-steam models, did provide sufficient variety to keep the ennui at a minimum.

 

I also have realized that I have NEVER been a modeler as such, and have generally preferred operating DISPLAYS over "layouts".

Well, I'm 38, and for most of my life I've been an Anime/Manga/Videogame fan. But recently, while I am still that, I've also been feeling the urge to do something else. Something creative that doesn't require sitting in front of the TV.

 

When I was a kid my parents got me a lionel train set (Redwood Valley Express) and I loved that set, but as I grew up my interests turned to anime and manga (later videogames) but I always remembered that set.

 

About 5 years ago, I to a train show on a whim, saw the layouts, saw the new trains and the detail and said to myself I'm an adult now, I can buy a train set if I want so I did. It's been all downhill from their.

 

I'm still an anime/manga/videogame fan, and now I can add one more expensive hobby to the list. O gauge trains.

 

After reading the posts on this forum for the past few years, I haven't the slightest idea what I was thinking.

I have asked myself that very question many times.

One of the earliest memories I have is of my dad drawing, what I at that very young age thought was a good picture, of the locomotive he fired, on my childhood blackboard. 

Later I lived on in an old harness shop converted to a house as the first house on a

gravel road that led to a small town depot, and hung out at the depot, under the

water tower, and under the trestle across Floyd's Fork.  Then I discovered my cousin's

prewar Lionel set, and whined for a train set.   Peaks and valleys, but I am still on

the slide. 

Cause restoring real ones are too expensive!

Besides being a life-long Santa Fe enthusiast, which led to a career working at Santa Fe (and BNSF), I am in the hobby so that I can enjoy and recreate my memories of Santa Fe in the 1950's, perhaps its pinnacle as far as the classic image we have of that road.

just really love trains and doing a layout.  

I enjoy building things. Model railroading gives me the opportunity own and operate examples of N&W Steam power. This also give me the chance to be the "Crazy Grandpa with the Trains".

 

Crazy can be good...

 

Gilly

I was given a Lionel O guage set as a child.  I was born and grew up in Youngstown, Ohio.  This was a steel town back then.  I always loved playing with that train set, but also got to see a lot of the real trains as they hauled freight to the mills.  When I graduated High School, I went to work in the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Open Hearth.  I worked as a brakeman on the narrow guage RR that delivered scrap and Iron ore and limestone to the furnaces and at other time the narrow guage that delivered the molds to the pouring floor and taking the filled molds out to the stripper cranes. Two of my Uncles worked for the P&LE.  I occasionally would go down to where the P&LE delivered the Hot Iron from the blast furnaces and sit in the caboose talking with my uncle and they switched out the bottles. I now live in NC but still like to play with the O guage train.

 Because I love trains!!!!!!!!

Among other things, I'm a mechanical engineer and the ME university curriculum was built around the steam engine. We were the kings of the engineering world back then! No more.

Simple answer Kenn. Loved O-Gauge as a kid and I learned just how transportable this hobby is as you go through the various stages of life with school, kids, their activities, and lots of business transfers. I have found that this is the best time NOW I have experienced with O-Gauge trains as I am semi-retired and have more time to enjoy the trains and layout.

It has been with me since I was a kid, it keeps me centered along with other hobbies, woodworking, photography, and shooting.

Example, yesterday was a bad day at work, one of the worst, when I got home and eat dinner with the family I went to the basement did a little work getting the basement ready for my version of the crappy basement railroad society and watched an old Dracula movie as I unpacked some trains from the moving boxes, like finding old friends, I soon forgot the day and started to have an enjoyable evening, work forgotten and the body relaxed.

That is how it works for me.

It helps me relax. My job is somewhat crazy as I have to keep systems ready for use when everything goes sideways in an emergency, plus clean up the technical messes made by people making political decisions over technical issues. When I tinker with trains, work on the club layout, or design a layout for myself or assisting someone else, my mind relaxes and the stress goes away.

 

It also compliments my other hobby, plotting complete global domination and subjugating this planet in the name of our leader Zythron the Insistent of Remulac. Now that I've said that, Pignatelli's associates will probably be here shortly to pick me up for questioning.

For 67 of the nearly 68 years it is because of the early-years Christmas ritual...bringing Dad's 366W set down from the attic (stored in an old Electrolux box) and setting it up around the tree. 

 

After I reached the age of ??, I got my own Scout set, followed a year later by a set featuring the 2343 Warbonnet, etc., etc., etc..  HO took over somewhere along the line.  'Life' took over after that.  Re-tried HO, came to my senses...and a more practical level of ocular and manual dexterity...returning to O3R.

 

My first wife loathed my hobby(s)...and me, as it turned out.

 

Then I found my true soul-mate...who, to my great surprise and happiness, is as much into this hobby as I.  She is my greatest blessing.

 

Now life is complete for that final euphoric run to the finish line.  And the trains are very much a part of that run!

 

KD

My first train ride was in August 1932 at 6 months old from N.C to Dennison, Ohio. My first toy train was a NYC Marx winder in 1938. Steam trains, and in particular the 2-8-0s and 4-6-0s of my hometown railroad, have always fascinated me. I got back into the hobby in 1980, switching from HO to O-gauge. Up until the mid-80s, starting the build and dismantling of layouts as a result of job relocations had been my model railroading.

I approached retirement in 1990 [playing with trains on the mountain retirement house Den carpet].The outlook was for playing golf daily but it finally dawned on me that by the fourth golf hole, while searching for my ball, I always developed the feeling that  I could be doing something productive. As it turned out fooling with trains has been mentally productive, requiring a much lower frustration tolerance than golf[even with the "new" electronics].

Anyway, my wife had become a "scratch" and championship golfer and even playing a Sunday afternoon round with her was detrimental to my testosterone level. So,upon retirement in 1992 I built a 14x32, twin shelf, 5-track operation in her high ceiling kitchen-breakfast room via an agreement to evacuate the Den carpet oval and stop running trains during Oprah and TV Soaps. Additionally in '97 I built a 15x25 layout upstairs in our Greensboro Condo anticipating that we would age out there. We are doing so. At both home locations the large layouts have now been dismantled and today I am piddling with a little 9x16 attic layout over the garage. 

 

In spite of today's frustrations that accompany age and health issues, the fun and anticipation of "doing trains" remains--oft times more mental than physical.

I saw a Lionel catalog and wanted everything in it but purchased what I could afford.  The next year Lionel published another catalog and, again, I wanted everything in it but purchased what I could afford.  Same thing the next year and the year after that and so on.  Then eBay came along and all the things I could not afford previously were offered for sale and I purchased what I could afford.  Meanwhile, Lionel continued publishing catalogs, and I continued wanting everything ...

Anyway, I am in the hobby, because what else would I do with all these $#@%&!! toy trains and accessories?




What, me worry?

I find it to be very relaxing. I'm retired just over 9 years now & I have had my layout up & running for the last 6 years. I pick up my remote & forget about everything else.

 

 

Joe B

When I was a teenager I came across about 20 Lionel cars that where stored in my basement.  I asked about them and was told when my uncle died rather suddenly they brought some of his stuff to our house.  The were his when he was a kid and I always thought it would be neat to get them running again (they were pretty beat up)  When I got my first place I asked my Mom if they were still down in the basement and she said yes and if I wanted them they were mine.  I got them fixed up to the point I could run them around the Christmas tree and as they say the rest is history.

I don't know

Grandpa's fault! A Lionel & TCA guy before I was born, He gave me my 2037 Adriatic before I could run it. I don't remember not being in this hobby, its "just how things are".

I've just always liked trains.  No one else in my family is into it, although from my mom's side in Michigan, I have an uncle who works for Norfolk Southern (former Conrail) and my first HO trains came from my grandpa on her side, who I never did get the chance to really get to know well.  Part of what has kept me in the hobby is that I like to be different, and there are few others that I know that have any kind of hobby similar to this. 

I am equally involved in both scale modeling and toy trains.  Though I began with HO, I've always liked the chunkiness of the O gauge trains.  The dream of owning and running O gauge trains didn't become a reality until well after I graduated from high school, so I would consider it something of fulfilling a childhood dream. 

Really like that someone dug this old thread out of the OGR "junkyard".  It's been a while.  For me, model trains is a way to fulfill my early desires to have made my vocation in railroading.  More than that, it brings me the kind of pleasure that I knew during my early tinplate days as a kid.  Still more, at my present, ripe old age of 77, it's something that physically I can still do that I enjoy.  At one time I was Superintendent of a full sized trolley museum (strictly volunteer; non-paid)   But nowadays I couldn't get involved with trackwork, crawl under trolley cars to work on them, or even spend 12 hours a day operating them for visiting  passengers. 

 

But, I CAN head downstairs, work, create, build or operate my train layout, for myself or for my visitors, and I can enjoy it without overworking myself.  It's a great compromise; one that gives my some of the same pleasures, and it keeps me active, healthy, interested in something, and even proud of various accomplishments I have done.  Further, I have met some great friends that share my interests, knowledge and enthusiasm for an avocation.

 

What more could anyone ask of a hobby?

 

Paul Fischer

I love toys and I love history.  Toy trains fulfills that need as I would not get far taking my cap guns into the neighborhood!  Now that I am retired, I am learning even more about electricity (something I knew nothing about).  A big bonus is how much my older kids and now my grandkids love the layout and the trains and accessories.  There is not much realism on the layout which seems to be the way most folks here like it.  It is enormous fun and a great way to relax and still learn something.

I have only been in the hobby since the beginning of the year.  My other hobby is wargaming with 28mm (32mm head to toe, approx 1/55) modern miniatures.  While designing a board for a zombie apocalypse game, I thought how cool would it be to have a length of track with some cars full of surprises.  That got me buying some Lionel on ebay, that got me hooked on Lionel Lines locos (love the blue and orange scheme, and since I am in Australia I have no affinity for a particular railroad), now I own about 20 locomotives, over 100 pieces of rolling stock, tons of fasttrack and over 100 1/50 and 1/55 diecast vehicles.  Still painting zombie apocalypse survivors, but more time is spent playing with the trains on my 8x6 layout, with plans to expand it to 14x6 to fit all the new bits and pieces.  Love that I can combine more than one hobby passion.

 

"I hate trains"....I just keep buying them until I finally find one actually I hate..now if you'll excuse me I have to go to the bay to pay for more attempts...

...probably in a bit of the twilight for me, as I'm finding other interests outside of railroading that I'm enjoying quite a bit more.  I've been gathering stuff for years, and now have become primarily interested in the 60's and the space race.  Probably going to significantly downsize my inventory over the next year, with the exception of a couple of steam engines (Hudsons).

 

r0d

Guys and Gals,

 

Whenever I ask myself this question (and I find myself asking it a lot since coming back to the hobby in 2005) is the fact that it makes me feel young. That and meeting through the forum all of you who share my interest. Before I pass(not for a long while I am only 56) I intend to leave a mark........I want to be an inspiration to kids to explore other things than just their Xboxes!

 

Mike Maurice

My wife says I'm NOT allowed to have any guns or sharp objects.

 

But, other than that, I guess it's because, as a child, I got to ride the B&O from McKeesport, Pa to Gary, In almost every summer.  That was a round trip.  I loved every minute of it even though it was a night trip every time.  It was still cool.  I loved riding in the vista dome.

 

Also, back then, every time we went thru town you almost always had to wait for a passing train.

 

So, for me, it's like reliving my childhood.  I guess.

 

Rick